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Researchers Find Roads Shatter the Earth's Surface Into 600,000 Fragments (phys.org)
An international team of conservation scientists have released a new global map of roadless areas that shows that the Earth's surface is shattered by roads into more than 600,000 fragments. While roads allow humans to travel to nearly every region in the world, they severely reduce the ability of ecosystems to function effectively. Phys.Org reports: Recent research carried out by an international team of conservation scientists and published in the journal Science used a dataset of 36 million kilometers of roads across the landscapes of the earth. They are dividing them into more than 600,000 pieces that are not directly affected by roads. Of these remaining roadless areas only 7 percent are larger than 100 km2. The largest tracts are to be found in the tundra and the boreal forests of North America and Eurasia, as well as some tropical areas of Africa, South America and Southeast Asia. Only 9 percent of these areas undisturbed by roads are protected. Roads introduce many problems to nature. For instance, they interrupt gene flow in animal populations, facilitate the spread of pests and diseases, and increase soil erosion and the contamination of rivers and wetlands. Then there is the free movement of people made possible by road development in previously remote areas, which has opened these areas up to severe problems such as illegal logging, poaching and deforestation. Most importantly, roads trigger the construction of further roads and the subsequent conversion of natural landscapes, a phenomenon the study labels "contagious development."
Where we're going we don't need roads.
they're alive, i tell ya.
"It didn't! Its dreams were SHATTERED!"
(queue the Rolling Stones)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
People denying the existence of roads may be roads themselves.
600,000 may sound like a big number. But consider that the Earth's land surface is 197,000,000 mi^2 (sorry for the imperial units, figure it out). So, roads "shatter" the Earth into average sections of 328 mi^2. Big woopee-doo.
("Shatter?" Unless the claimant can find lots of roads which have created fault lines in the Earth's crust, that's a troll at best, and more likely a deliberate falsification to support an agenda.)
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
To 'fix' critical ecosystems, could we 'bury' sections of roads (either by tunneling, or building 'hills' over the top of existing roads? (the latter being easier in places which cut through hills already)
Should future roads be built underground/at the treetop level?
Data for data's sake is fine, but recommendations need to come out of this.
... the human species is responsible for devastation across all ecosystems on the planet. Over 7 billion of these creatures are multiplying like a cancer. They consume vast quantities of resources, they destroy ecosystems. There is plastic waste in the ocean, overfishing which is decimating the fish population, pollution of ecosystems, and radiocative waste from nuclear bombs and powerplant accidents. And new humans begat even more of these damaging beasts.
Too bad nothing goes under or over, that would shatter this stupid story title.
roads are triggering.. roads cause ptsd.. roads need trigger warnings.
Seriously it sounds an awful lot like his manifesto.
Crap, crap, MEGA CRAP.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
I'm always hearing about cars hitting deers. In my neck of the woods it's cars hitting squirrels. Every couple years there is a big media splash about how we're spending millions so wildlife can take underground tunnels and not turn into roadkill on a 70 mph road. Keep in mind, this is where squirrels are the issue.
/,, preferring soylent Why should I have to \br\ when I want a paragraph break?
So who is surprised wildlife habitat has been divided into x times 1000 little bitty chunks, each too small to support the wildlife?
Too many people, not enough land.
I'm getting to hate
You kind of left out a word. It would rephrase to two words:
environmental extremists.
With that addition, I agree wholeheartedly.
But then, most extremism is bad for most people.
Most environmentalist are very concerned for what's good for people.
This just in: Researchers report that 600,000 is a very big number that you should be super impressed by. That is all.
Researchers Find Roads Shatter the Earth's Surface Into 600,000 Fragments
Loaded word presenting a non-neutral POV. Reword and try your submission again.
Better known as 318230.
The article actually advocates the protection of the most ecologically rich already roadless areas, not the destruction of roads. Roads in lots of these areas wouldn't necessarily be beneficial to humankind. It's just that in many of these areas there is insufficient protection of the habitats in them.
Obviously, there can be a smarter strategy for humans than the two extremes of no farming and killing everything that you seem to outline in your post.
And, most environment researchers (or academics of any type) are definitely not rich, especially if you take into account the atrocious salary for early career researchers who make less than bus drivers.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
This is something that a 100 meter rise in the sea level will solve quite easily.
Have gnu, will travel.
... completely ignoring the fact that people need the environment to survive. We need air, plants/animals and water. They don't need us.
Flying cars.
Remember, you heard it here first.
Have gnu, will travel.
I was going to mod you down, but I thought I'd take the time to publicly berate you instead.
The article in question is a scientific, scholarly article, written by actual environmental researchers. It appears[0] to have done what you would expect of a scientific article -- it has identified a possible problem (environmental fragmentation due to roads), and had done some measurements surrounding the issue. And that's it. The article isn't judging you. It's not judging society. Indeed, right in the very first sentence of the abstract it says:
Roads have done much to help humanity spread across the planet and maintain global movement and trade.
About the only conclusion the authors draw is that more should be done to protect the existing large tracts of land without roads (totalling about 7% of earth surface). And that's it. They don't call you a bad person for using roads. They aren't trying to guilt people into ripping up existing roads. All they are saying is "roads are great; we need roads; they cause some problems; and we have a measurement to frame the problem". Nothing more. There is no complaining going on. This is science, not ethics, so get a grip already. The one with a huge bias here isn't ./ or the articles authors, it's you.
Yaz
[0] -- I unfortunately haven't been able to access the full article. While I do have access to a number of scientific article databases, this article was just published today, and doesn't appear to be indexed in any of them just yet.
We have close to 7.5 billion people on the planet. Without roads people would be living in poverty. Unless you have a reasonable alternative you cannot complain.
Fewer people.
Underground roads.
Robots.
With the current level of automation, 7.5 million seems like a more sustainable number of people than 7.5 billion. As automation increases, this can be decreased.
And, obviously, there are self-appointed experts eager to choose who is allowed to breed. Marvelous!
It can be randomized.
Or we can let nature choose by measures like banning childhood medicine for everyone.
We have close to 7.5 billion people on the planet.
The problem is that NUM_PEOPLE * RESOURCES_USED_PER_PERSON exceeds the sustainable level on our planet.
The fix would be to try to get both the size of the human population and the amount of resources used per person to decline. The birth rates are already decreasing in many parts of the world (except Africa and India), but it is challenging to reduce or limit the resource usage per person.
It's easy to be an environmentalist when you are wealthy and have a beautiful and large home.
That is part of the human nature: seeing flaws in others but not in oneself. For example, the Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has said that he is concerned of the overpopulation, but he has at least 5 kids!
You kind of left out a word. It would rephrase to two words: - environmental extremists.
Environmental "extremists "are influential however, and their ideas are likely to take hold with all.
Especially with environmentalism; yesterday's extreme is tomorrow's everyday normal.
Thus they're not really extremists ----- that's just the temporary status of some, while the rest of the environmentalists
catch up with them.
Look how Global Warming theory progressed?
Not only did the idea and its proponents shift over 15 years from extremists to "mainstream" status the idea that humans need to sacrifice industry and cars "To save the planet",
but now research into the subject is itself a multi-billion$$$ market.
Also, this concept called "scientific consensus" has been invented
Which is essentially means extremists can get together as a group and certify their own results, as when enough extremists get together it automatically becomes normal and infallible.
Thus the "environmental extremists" have a way of grouping together and becoming just environmentalists,
and making other environmentalists more closely match their ideas and philosophies.
The humans and vehicles running across the surface are there?
Does this mean that roads are sentient? Apparently they reproduce...
This. For the love of FSM, somebody mod this up. Scientists want to offer their findings to the world with the hope that they will make it a better place to live. Far too many of the posts on this site have called into question the good faith of scientists in this regard.
It tales a lot of study, work, and determination to become a scientist. Despite what some may suggest, the financial rewards are modest. Scientists put their hearts into what they do. They deserve to be heard when they have something to say.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
People also need roads to survive. People don't need any type of roadless environment.
As for animals and plants, when they start to show empathy for us, they'll have earned our empathy in return. (You may worship them as you wish, of course.)
You clearly didn't read the summary. It skipped over the fig leaf and jumped almost directly into all of the ways that you and your roads are killing the planet.
No, I went one better and went and found the actual paper the article is based on.
The summary didn't make any judgement of you or anyone else either. It listed a variety of problems caused by roads -- and that's it. If you feel personally slighted by the list, that's your problem.
Again -- nobody said anything about tearing up roads, or that we shouldn't use them. Roads cause some problems, and help with others. Adults can discuss the cons of something without it implicitly becoming about trying to ban or tear that item out of existence. Indeed, instead of going insane and assuming they are being judged by a scientific paper, rational adults would instead have a discussion on how we might be able to mitigate the problems, while continuing to enjoy the benefits.
Instead, we seem to have too many babies around here who read a list acknowledging problems with roads and assume "They hate roads! I use roads! Therefore they hate me/civilization/everything I stand for!", when no such things were stated or implied.
Now if you're interested in putting on your adult pants and discussing like an rational human being, a more interesting discussion would be on the relative benefits of mitigation strategies, such as wildlife overpasses/underpasses. Parks Canada is considered one of the major world experts on practical wildlife crossing research, and has some interesting materials online discussing the problems and solutions.
See how that works? Someone identifies a problem. Someone else identifies possible solutions. The solutions are evaluated. Nobody goes berserk and simply tears everything apart, nobody calls anyone names, nobody assumes anyone is a bad person. Like an adult. Try it for yourself.
Yaz
I'm not sure you know how science (as a profession) works. These guys wrote the paper for a reason. They did the research for a reason. There's a grant manager and staff writing contracts, doing accounting and presenting reports to an NGO board about this work... all for a reason. This didn't just happen because of scientific curiosity, and it's absolutely insulting to scientists to remove us from policy and moral debates. I think if anything, we got into science to win those debates. (If you can't tell yet, I'm a scientist, and your comment royally pisses me off.) We do science because of our biases and because we want to change things.
So yeah. This work was ABSOLUTELY about making an argument blaming civilization for damaging the environment. There are many fields of science devoted to that purpose. The people doing this work are absolutely hoping that more people think about roads as a problem as a result of what they've written.
You're quoting the editor's blurb, not the scientists, by the way. The scientists end their abstract with
Those are not the words of someone just reporting the facts with no commentary. These guys got paid by their donors to do this because they're expected to make statements like this, and they're published in Science because they're good at making arguments like this. This is what professional scientists do.
They don't need you pretending that there is no moral message or call to action in the work they're doing.
The intention of articles such as this is clearly to make people feel bad about... well, their existence, really.
No, it isn't. And there is something seriously wrong with the psyche of anyone who reads a scientific article and that is what they pull out of it.
The article reported on a scientific paper, and that is all. Stop trying to "read between the lines" on everything to pick out intentions that are not there. You only wind up reinforcing your own prejudices.
Yaz
Click-whores gets fucked in the ass, after they die.
The rest of us go to heaven.
that environmentalists don't care about what's good for people.
Actually they do, which is kind of the point of environmentalism, ensuring that people can continue to use the earth as they have done in the past.
People don't care about what's good for people.
According to this, um, 1950s Popular Science magazine we will have flying cars any day now. Problem solved, no need for those pesky roads all over the place.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Roads introduce many problems to nature. For instance, they interrupt gene flow in animal populations, facilitate the spread of pests and diseases, and increase soil erosion and the contamination of rivers and wetlands. Then there is the free movement of people made possible by road development in previously remote areas, which has opened these areas up to severe problems such as illegal logging, poaching and deforestation. Most importantly, roads trigger the construction of further roads and the subsequent conversion of natural landscapes, a phenomenon the study labels "contagious development."
Do you really not understand how this is left-wing environmentalist misanthropism? If not, I recommend reading it again, paying special attention to the part about "Roads introduce many problems to nature" and where it compares roads to a disease with "contagious development". Seriously, I do not understand how you are pretending to miss the clear meaning here. You know, people would take environmentalists a lot better if you people weren't so full of hate for the rest of us all the time.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Agreed, fixing population growth is the only permanent solution to our environmental footprint because otherwise the "greener" we get we'll just grow to be 10 billion, 20 billion, 50 billion and so on until no matter how green we are individually the sheer number of straws on the camel's back will break it. That said, how much environmental impact we make is not insignificant - unfiltered pollution and unchecked use of toxic materials could easily be the difference between a sustainable population of 100 million and 100 billion.
So yes, I think it's a valuable point. But if you're using it as a blocker in that there's no point discussing anything else until we got population growth under control it's an excuse. Not least of which because we mostly have, it's not a population boom anymore because the birth numbers - which are the only thing that ultimately matters - are slowing down. Average children per woman was 5 in 1964 and less than 2.5 now with a replacement population of about 2.1, so from almost +3 to less than +0.4 on a downward trend.
We will be 10 billion-ish because of the fill-up effect of the population pyramid equalizing and the continuing advances in medical science, but nothing like in the past. But the pressing issue is whether the planet can sustain 10 billion people polluting as much as the worst of us or whether we're already past the sustainable limit. If we are we either need to downsize the population a lot - unlikely in the short term, at least - or we need to get so much greener that 10 billion is sustainable. It's certainly not harder than the other option.
P.S. I think the expansion is often far more resource consuming than the mere continuation, like we build houses and roads and as long as roughly the same number of people live there we just need to maintain them and slowly repair/replace them as necessary. If we're growing though we need to make new houses and new roads because in the game of musical chairs there's eventually some people left over that can't fit in what we already have. That in itself is a good reason to limit growth, it's more sustainable to carry on than to constantly expand, which means you constantly have to take resources from somewhere new.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
They need to stop putting deer crossings in places with high traffic.
The roads they are talking about are not in metropolitan centers. If plants before "man" can transverse from Europe and Asia to the the Americas then I doubt a simple two lane "road" is going to stop nature.
Jeremy Clarkson featured this squirrel bridge in the current week's Grand Tour
First of all, you might have noticed that both me and the OP were talking about _the article on slashdot_, not the scientific paper. And second, you seem mightily sure about the contents of the paper, despite not having read it.
What _is_ the reason for the article being on slashdot, do you suppose? How is this "news for nerds, stuff that matters"? The only thing I can imagine is that it fits in with the new slashdot policy of having far too many eco-articles, and the slant of those is most definitely that "we are all bad".
If anyone should examine a topo map of North America and give a reasonable estimate as to which major land contours, lake systems and other land features were either caused (or prevented) by the specific actions of BEAVERS, the rodents would be singled out in an IPCC report as a major cause of 'climate change', exposed by CNN, trash-talked on The View, sold bogus 'log pullers', and hunted down near extinction. We could begin by interesting Europeans in beaver pelt clothing...
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Excellent. Though I did read "prickle of excitement" as "trickle of excrement" on the first pass.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If people would need roads to survive, they would have evolved wheels instead of legs.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
And, obviously, there are self-appointed experts eager to choose who is allowed to breed. Marvelous!
Why don't we just do a fitness test instead of appointing experts?
Pool the limited number of "breeding tokens" and use a volley of competitive strategy games to eliminate people from being awarded a token;
starting with ---- Must score 100,000 points on Tetris within 3 attempts.
Next competitive Warcraft II, Civilization, then Chess, Scrabble, Scotland Yard, Acquire, Shogun , Chutes and Ladders, Euphoria, Amerigo, Go, Stratego, Carcassonne, Takenoko, Chronology, Ticket to Ride, Clue, Agricola, and Monopoly.
Each breeding candidate (Both Females and Males must have qualified for breeding) must choose ....
Entry Fee: All candidates pay a $100 entry fee, it shall be illegal for any 3rd party to pay, gift, or otherwise provide entry fee in support a candidate in paying.
The expense is non-deductible, and breeding candidates will be subject to a financial audit at their expense to prove personal ability to pay derived from candidate's own labor. Candidates without thorough records of all finances or who use primary cash or under-the-table deals to transact are ineligible.
Options (C), (D), (E), and (F) require an additional $2000 entry fee the first time to pay for administration of fitness tests.
Most breeding candidates will want option (A) or (B).
Option (A) Lottery -- 10% of the government quota of allowed annual breeding events will be available through this option, when supplies run out, successful candidates will be in a waiting list --- Candidates will purchase lottery tickets for $1 each. They must choose 6 numbers between 1 and 60, which will be drawn randomly by a ball machine with an equal chance for each number. Candidates must get 5 numbers accurate to become a potential breeding candidate. Before the drawing, candidates will be given a randomized choice of 2 of the above games they must play against everyone who picked option (A), their tickets will be voided if they are not in the top 40th percentile. To demonstrate physical fitness, prospects will be given arm wrestling challenges with 5 other randomized breeding candidates, and those in less than the 40th percentile will be eliminated before the lottery drawing.
Option (B) Fight to the death -- 40% of the government quota of allowed annual breeding events will be available through this option --- Candidates will be given a choice of hand weapons and then placed in an arena. Each candidate will have to face off in 5 battles of life and death with randomized other Option B candidates, If the candidate surrenders or dies in battle they are eliminated. If they pass 5 battles, then they will pick two board games from the above list to demonstrate mental fitness and Play against 5 others who chose option (B), they must be in the top 40% of competitors.
Option (C) Be judged upon performance in 16 of the above games --- 30% of the government quota of allowed annual breeding events will be available through this option ---- Must play each competitive games 5 times against 5 different randomized sets of other candidates who picked option (C) and be within the top 60th-percentile of Wins/Losses or Points earned for every game to avoid elimination, Next to demonstrate physical fitness, stand on a scale to be weighed and show a weight less than 200 pounds, then next bench press 400 pounds 3 reps, then immediately afterward a clock starts and you have 16 minutes to complete a 5K marathon, they will repeat the physical challenge 5 times, and must be successful at least 3 out of 5.
Option (D) Start a profitable business or charity -- 10% of the government quota of allowed annual breeding events will be available through this option --- Demonstrate starting a business, or creating a profitable invention, and subject books to an independent auditor proving
> but have no effect on ecosystems other than to limit the spread of wildfires
This claim is not well founded, I'm afraid. Even the most casual look at Google shows thousands of well written articles on the difficulty, and many well researched scientific papers on obvious and subtle effects. Slower moving animals like snakes and turtles are devastated by roads, and can lose genetic diversity because they can't safely cross roads to cross breed with even nearby habitats. And animals that need to migrate due to winter or due to local food depletion often have profound difficulty finding safe and effective ways past piles of fenced in highway.
The study was done by researchers from the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development. What would you expect their conclusion to be?
Frankly you're both right or wrong depending on how you look at it.
Raisey's response to the article and to its source was reasonably calling out their obvious agenda and use of biased language.
However, the word 'shattered' doesn't appear to have appeared in the original study (they used fragmented), so it was at least mostly scientific (again, with an agenda but not quite so inflammatory)
My objection to the original study would be their arbitrary addition of 1km margins to every road before calculating, which would obviously bias their resulting calculations. Does an unpaved logging road through a forest that gets used twice a year merit that?
-Styopa
the majority of the world already lives in poverty so no real change.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Yep, it's science. We all benefit from the wealth of knowledge that scholarly articles from the academic world provide for us.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I am always perplexed by left greens who procreate. Don't they realize that the most green thing they can do is simply to choose to not have children.
https://www.goodreads.com/book...
"Hugh Pine, a porcupine genius, works with his human friends to save his less intelligent fellow porcupines from the deadly dangers of the road."
Anyone who saw the video version of this on CBS Storybreak might remember the refrain: "Looks like it's gonna be a hot day today":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
More seriously, ecological and evolutionary theory (including island biography) shows how the size of a habitat and how habitats are connected affects the distribution and genetics of organisms in habitats, so habitat fragmentation has consequences.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I found a synonym for "overhead". It's "graft".
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
As noted below in the comments, the study was done by the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development. They have an agenda and will emphasize some things and ignore others to advance their agenda. This is not just neutral science. By not mentioning the benefits that roads bring to humankind it tries to imply that that are unnecessary. Yes of course there are costs to roads. But when you only research the costs and not the benefits you wreak of bias.
The very name "sustainable development" has come to mean you are only interested in research from a specific perspective. It's a deep sociological bias. It would be like a physicist who would only publish problematic issues related to electricity and not the positive ones. Btw, are you a scientist? Do you know how the proverbial sausage os made. From personal experience I can tell you it's not pretty. They don't want any development (sustainable development implies there are some types they indorse but the phrasing is a deceit and a firm of propoganda) and because of their type we have rising housing costs all over the place especially in the UK. So instead of "berating" try looking at yourself.
the majority of the world already lives in poverty so no real change.
No, India and China are much better off compared with 25 years ago. Africa has taken off since 2000 and is starting to experience a meaningful rise in living standards. And nihilist attitudes prevent progress.
Do you even know how Slashdot works? Users submit articles, articles that are always going to reflect the submitters biases to some degree. If only some submitters submit stories, that is what we get. If you want to counteract those biases, submit stories that reflect your bias. The greater variety of stories we get, the better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
That is a common and erroneous claim. Those who want population growth usually want it for religious reasons or for cannon fodder. Those who want economic growth want it because it accompanies a higher standard of living.
Raising children is a heavy economic burden that depresses the economy for the time it takes to raise them. Most politicians aren't willing to wait 20 years. Government policies that affect population growth (China excepted) are either unintended consequences of other policies (like welfare promoting children among unwed women) or genocide (like policies promoted by Planned Parenthood.)
Government policies claimed to promote economic growth are generally wrong-minded and ignorant. Claiming that those policies will result in, or depend upon, population growth is mistaken.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Roadless regions are the most primitive and impoverished on earth. You appear to be hypothesizing a fantasyland where everyone rides pink flying unicorns.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Unless you have a reasonable alternative you cannot complain.
In some places they have under-passes designed specifically for wildlife to go through. That seems like a solution that can be employed without destroying civilization.
Between the extremes, try to look for a middle-ground solution. Usually you'll find it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The headline could have said "roads split ecosystems..." instead of using the very negative phrase 'shatter the earth'. It was intended to provoke exactly the response you are railing against.
No, it was a very descriptive phrase. You're the one putting emotions into it.
What does it look like when you shatter something? That's exactly what it looks like. There's nothing negative about that. it's descriptive.
Do you really not understand how this is left-wing environmentalist misanthropism?
Which doesn't preclude it from being truth.
Can you reference any studies that came to opposite conclusions?
So, your response to "Why is Slashdot so biased?" is that you didn't even read the piece being discussed. Brilliant!
And now that you've been shamed into reading it, you are pretending that it doesn't say what it clearly says, and responding to things that no one said. Double brilliant!
See that "Preview" button?